Andrew Cline, Shelby County Schools
Kentucky School Advocate
December 2024
Q. Why did you want to serve on the Shelby County school board?
A. My wife and I have six kids, so I wanted to be involved in my kids’ education. I understood boards of education because my mom was an assistant superintendent for the Mason County Schools. After serving several terms on the site-based council at my kids’ elementary school, I realized I wanted to be involved in all the schools in the district, more on the governance side.
Q. You’ve worked in state government, but your career is now in public health?
A. Actually, it’s in business but I worked a number of years in public health. At UK, I studied education and sports administration and did my master’s work in public health with a focus on healthcare administration. I was an athletic trainer in college, and we coordinated medical services at sports events, so that helped set me up to serve at the state level in homeland security and public health preparedness. There was a big need to figure out how to handle all the money related to that from federal to state and from state to counties. So, while I was with homeland security at the state, I was a liaison for education, agriculture, EMS and the fire commission. Later, when I moved to Kentucky One Health, I focused on hospital readiness and preparedness and transitioned into hospital security.
Q. And now you have your own security company?
A. Yes, I am a founder and chief administrative officer of Tarian Security. We provide a full complement of safety services to schools, hospitals, airports and other businesses. We do active shooter training assessments, risk consulting assessments and supply armed and unarmed officers, school resource officers and police officers. We have 8,000 employees.
Q. Your jobs have covered a lot of ground. How does your varied work experience help you as a school board member?
A. First, in finance. I have dealt with federal grants, creating programs that were grant specific and compliant, which has helped me deal with the school budget. Being in the private sector now, I hire hundreds of people every month, so I understand the workforce development needs in my sector and in others. When I look at our school system, I’m thinking about what we are doing to generate the workforce we need. My experience has also helped me understand the diverse perspectives people bring to the table and communicate with fellow board members no matter what their perspective.
Q. I expected you to mention that your expertise in security issues was valuable.
A. I try to not bring my baggage from the security world to the table. I feel we have done a tremendous job in school safety in Shelby County. There are always ways to improve, but I don’t feel any students have been at a huge risk because of something that we’ve lacked in security.
Q. Your district has been a leader in competency-based learning, developing a portrait of a graduate and getting the community involved in deciding what students need to succeed after graduation, why is this important in Shelby County?
A. It was important to get the feedback and voices of industry, community leaders, families and educators. We had a good cross section as we came up with and identified the competencies they thought were important and matched that up with academic competencies. Implementing that across the schools allowed us to get people to look beyond the test score and the academic piece. Ensuring that we have the rigor around academics is constantly the effort.
Getting to know
Hometown: Mason County (Maysville)
Family: Wife, Alecia, a pediatric nurse practitioner; children: Will, law student at NKU; Alex, senior at EKU; Elli, sophomore at UK; Drew, high school sophomore; Izzy, a freshman and Abby, 7th grader.
Favorite subjects in school: Science and music.
Hobbies: Golf and attending my kids’ sports events. Will played baseball at Centre, Alex played football at EKU. Elli played soccer in high school. Drew’s a golfer and plays baseball. Izzy and Abby plays volleyball.
Book recommendation: “The 80/20 Principle: Achieve More with Less” by Robert Koch. I’ve been relating it to getting to the mindset of how our schools are going to be able to do more with less.
Interesting fact: I played classical violin starting when I was 4. My last performance was my junior year in college. I play bass guitar with church worship bands; sing tenor and can play violin, trumpet and baritone.